We are often raised in contexts where what we do are of outmost importance. We perform in school or in sports or at our first jobs. We build our self esteem by achieving and proving and performing. That's all great. As long as we manage to keep achieving, that is.

What about the times in our lives when we fail, when we make mistakes or when we are just too low to achieve anything in life. Our self esteem won't help us then. This is when we need self compassion.

Cultivating compassion for ourselves is what will always get us through. We need to be compassionate to our flaws, to our embarrassing traits, to our humanness. As long as we can show compassion to ourselves, we're much more likely to do it towards others as well. But foremost, we're less likely to resist whatever we're going through which is the basis for changing our state for something lighter, better, brighter.

There's nothing wrong with a high self esteem, but if you can't be compassionate towards yourself, when life falls apart, you'll prolong your suffering until you can.

What can you do today to show more compassion towards yourself? What will you do tomorrow to keep practicing?